Title in Effect: Pirate Queen
System Integrity: 100%
Entropic Order: 0% penalty
Combat Status: All Green
The Fire has Ignited. Commence combat operations in 5…4…3…
The android once known as Christina Lorentia Alvarez-Gonzalez Alexandria Lorraine Pennington-Huarez Valentina Maria Borgnine-Cruz Carmina Selena Escobar-Sanchez Silveria Stanley Matsumoto-Chinchilla Madonna Cher David Letterman-Bateman XVIII, who had managed to ditch that infuriating name via the convenient method of marriage in trade for the much smoother Cee Fatalis, was wandering the wreck of what she was guessing had once been a ship named the Glorious Venture, based on her guesslation of the faded, half-ruined markings on its side.
The vessel was over a kilometer long, nearly half of that thick through the midsection, and it would never fly again. It had fallen onto the world of Tarkarus II ages ago, built by a forgotten race of something-or-others as a generation ship, meant to slowboat its way to habitable worlds in the days before easy FTL flight or dimensional translocation. Whatever had happened to cause the enormous vessel to crash into the pitted, blasted surface of barely-habitable Tarkarus, Cee didn’t know or particularly care. By now the ancient colony ship was a corroded wreck, half-sunk into the rocky badlands it had impacted in. Great jagged gashes had been ripped in its hull, entire sections of ship torn away. Detritus from the wreck was strewn across the area for kilometers in all directions – broken-down bits of the ship itself, its one-time cargo, the occasional makeshift wreckage-structure that served as proof that for a time, at least, some of the crew had survived the crash and tried to make a go of it.
They hadn’t succeeded. The only things that lived in the Glorious Venture now were the small, hardy critters that were native to Tarkarus – pebbly metallic-skinned little lizard-things with gaping mouths and skittery legs, constantly hunting each other through the chewed-out ruins of the ship and its immediate environs. The brutal rust-stained wasteland surrounding the ship was all but silent, marked only by the occasional groan of overstressed structural supports trying to bear up the broken weight of the decaying vessel and the brief, agonized screams of native creatures which had lost the battle for survival.
And the furious squealing of one particular rat-sized lizard-thing, gnashing its jaws impotently as it swung through the air in the hand of one Cee Fatalis, Pirate Queen and treasure-seeker, who’d heard of the ancient, perilous wreck and decided to see if there was anything left worth salvaging in it. Probably not, but she’d been bored, and exploring an ancient, perilous wreck had sounded more fun than drifting through space scanning newsfeeds for something worth running down. Bounty work had been unusually light recently, and for someone who called herself a Pirate Queen, Cee spent remarkably little time raiding or hijacking other starships.
At the moment, Cee was contemplating what to do with the lizard-thing in her hand. The critter had earned her attention after trying to ambush Polly Vinyl Chloride, her V.I. captain’s parrot, who’d decided in a highly uncharacteristic fit of courage to accompany her through her interior sweep of the old generation ship. Either that or PVC hadn’t liked his chances hanging out in the badlands outside, without anything to protect him from little beasties looking to feed. Like this one.
“Raah! Flog him down the plank, raaah!” PVC snapped, still fluttering angrily around Cee’s head as the critter who’d tried to jump him chittered its outrage. Cee was ignoring both irritants for the moment; she’d found the ship’s residential quarters. She could feel a faint stirring of interest from the Eikona ghost in her head; while Alexiel hadn’t been nearly as chattery of late as she’d been on Vestusio, Cee knew the virtual girl had a keen interest in the tales of ancient peoples.
“Think we’ll find an Eikona body here, Alex?” Cee asked conversationally, idly tossing the lizard-thing up and down, catching it as if it were a rock or a ball instead of an exceedingly perturbed little bitey thing trying to get its fangs sunk into any bit of Cee it could reach. It wasn’t having much luck; the android always managed to catch it again just behind the fangs, or at an angle such that it couldn’t twist itself sufficiently to reach her. A fact which seemed to be driving the critter increasingly nuts as it scrambled ever more desperately to get away from Cee.
“Raah! Feed him to the fishes, raaaah!” PVC cawed, right about the same time a strong mental impression of a disgusted snort confirmed Alexiel’s continued opinion of Cee’s thus-far fruitless quest to find an inert Eikona body to stuff the engram-ghost into.
“Hey, can’t hurt to look. PVC, shut your stupid beak before I see how much of you I can fit in a rat-lizard thing.” Gawd, to think she’d actually spent money on that goddamn robird…
“Raah! No respect; no respect at all, raah!”
Cee sighed, conjuring up a golden-glowing hamsterball around the rat-lizard thing at the apex of her next toss. Catching it again, she flicked the ball, razard and all, down the hall, watching it for a moment as the enraged beastie trapped inside the ball rolled madly, bouncing off walls and debris for a few dozen meters before Cee dispersed the hamsterball. Just like that, the razard found a hole in a bulkhead to disappear into, vanishing back into the derelict ship.
Freed of the burden of carting around a razard, Cee straightened up and glared at PVC. The android was an inch or so over six feet tall, just north of 1.8 meters in the more widespread metric measurement system, coming in at just under two hundred and seven kilograms. Most of that was density, not outright hugeness – while Cee was not a skinny little stick, she was also not a blimp, and in fact cut a rather lascivious figure of artificial femininity. Currently she was rocking the Indiana Y look, wearing a battered leather bomber jacket, off-white tank top, and a set of khaki short-shorts over thigh-high legs and low athletic boots. And a sweet wide-brimmed hat, of course, with her hair done up under it to keep it out of the muck. Less fashionable was her typical gunbelt across the waist, Gunsmoke-G holstered on her right hip. Sexy but serviceable, which was definitely a plus for tromping around a rusted-out hulk looking for swag and occasionally fucking with razards.
Not much luck so far…but some half-felt instinct itched at Cee. Somehow, she knew that her day was going to be much more interesting before too terribly long here. How, or why? That was yet to be determined…but that same instinct had Cee’s left hand resting on the grip of her revolver as she worked her way through the residential quarters, examining the wreckage of a dead civilization.